L1 use in pre-task planning by child EFL learners

Abstract

An important issue in studies on pre-task planning (PTP) is the language used by the participants, but only recently have researchers paid attention to this topic, with no study focusing on children. This study investigated whether the use of L1 or the L2 in PTP would have a different impact on children’s use of the third-person singular morpheme -s. Eighteen 11–12 year-old EFL children with elementary proficiency level worked on a dictogloss task in pairs. They were divided into an L1 PTP group, an L2 PTP group and a control group. The findings revealed that participants did focus their attention on the form of the L2 during the dictogloss stage but very little attention was paid to the target structure -s. However, the L1 PTP pairs produced more turns focused on L2 form and more LREs than the L2 PTP pairs during the PTP stage, which indicates that L1 use allowed these children to discuss problematic formal issues of the L2.